Saturday, 31 December 2016

and the end of all measurement of time.
Even our debaucheries are so banal,
for being so alike due to post-modern living.
We are that banal that nobody is prepared
to give their evil nature the depth of character
that would openly mark them out as different.

The evil in 'being normal' is grace sufficient for all
in this age of soul-less machine led consumerism.

Thursday, 29 December 2016

If responsibility towards other people
is about apt rewards for good deeds
that are conceived and born good will,
then what does the removal of reward,
as happens to so many who are well meaning, mean?

More responsibility? Even to the point
of rewarding yourself because nobody else will?

Wednesday, 28 December 2016

Every adult wants a job
because it is the means
to owning their own home,
and one of best filters in life
is having your own front door.

Everyone knows
that as jobs get more automated
so so work loses its character
and sense of reward. Submission
to a computer system can never be fun.

But consumers marvel at the ease
and cheapness by which they live,
little knowing how what they have
is paid for in human stress.

So we all want the office job
that another can't have,
to make sure we get the house
that we can fill on future debt,
which if the money goes right for us
means we can forget that misery
is the foundation we have built upon.

Friday, 23 December 2016

When God made the angels
they turned out as pale imitations of himself
-light from light, inside to out
who shone in front and from behind.
And they shone through a universe
in which they were scary servants
with (as yet) nobody there to scare.

Then God made the earth,
and divided the light, to create
what became 'day' and 'night'.
The sun gave strength, defining day.
And the moon gave rest, making it night.

Did God see how keen the angel Satan was?
Satan surely saw how the the sun gave life
and thought nothing of the respite of the dark,
nor did he see how Gods omniscience
was behind and inside everything.
Nobody, now, can learn how
Satan made his own light directional
-after the manner of the sun-nor how he inspired
the many anonymous angels followed his example.

But even as Satan imitated the sun to give strength,
the rest he offered through his darkness
created unending torment,
as he quenched God's light within him.

Wednesday, 21 December 2016

is an ingrained habit for humans
who like to detain each other
at length with expanding narratives.

Technology has vastly extended
the means by which we do this.

The problem is that as our stories
get retold they travel far less well,
and they become far more repetitive
than the teller likes to think;
the less personal the means
of the telling the further the story gets;
the more tightly the script
needs to be edited for the story to travel.

In our deathly self absorption
we continue to insist we are 'entertaining'.
God save you all from my boredom with myself.

Monday, 19 December 2016

When Andy Warhol said 'In the future
everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes'
he had thought through what fame meant.

He saw celebrity through the lens of the films
he made of everyone who came to his studio, 'The Factory'.

Without exception, they all faced a running movie camera
with nobody behind it looking into a clearly fake set.
Whilst Andy said 'I'm busy, just look into this.
This will be your portrait. I'll be back in five minutes'.
They became known as his screen tests.

Because nobody can hold an expression
of reaction without someone to react to
then the any fixed expression on the face of his guests
soon started to slip, until even the waxed moustache
on that most disciplined self publicist, Salavador Dali,
drooped for the camera like it only did in private.

So there it is; fifteen minutes of celebrity
is about the smile slowly dissolving from the faces
of those who most consistently seek the camera's lens.

Saturday, 17 December 2016

Christmas, and other times of fake cheer
introverts will see themselves as off-message,
unable to accept how the times they live in
are described-on terms that the majority accept.

But the on-line life turns the limited acceptance
of the majority inside out, and refashions their cliches
through a choice of minority, more niche, virtues.

In everyday speech this would be seen
as saying the opposite of what you mean.

The popular media calls the internet
'a post-truth world', as if they are the truth,
or at least 'the way' and 'the light'
that we can't do without.
Then it joins in -as if it could not let any world exist
without wanting to rule it. So the cycle continues.......

Wednesday, 14 December 2016

the impetus could be well meant,
but it is most likely
that the presentation behind it
was either advertising in disguise,
political spin,
or someone pretending to be wise
-the easier to fool the unwary.

Monday, 12 December 2016

Two hundred years after he lived
Thomas Malthus is still quoted,
where ever anyone worries in public
that there too many human beings
on their part of the planet for comfort.

His theory ran that when populations
grow far faster than food supplies can meet,
then mass tragedy will be the net result.
Better for the poorest (whose labour is cheap)
to breed far far less, lest 'the market for death'
claim the best part of them before they were done.

Never mind the loss of future
of the value of their labour
to an economy that keeps the few in wealth
by supporting mass poverty in the first place.

I can't mind him theorizing from a position
of wealth, as long as nobody calls it morality.
But as a C of E clergyman should he have been
more interested in how Want and Grinding Poverty
would increase personal immorality exponentially?

Saturday, 10 December 2016

How much science would it take,
to find the percentage of those
who in all humility actually believe
in the science process,
with all its equivocation and doubt,
vs the rest who simply like feeling right,
whilst believing that everyone is wrong?

What can we do with the folks
who only want science
to (ap)prove of their vanity?

Tuesday, 6 December 2016

Changing our moods through medication
in lieu of changing the world has a long ignoble history,
from the earliest (assumed) use of psychotropics on;
In the 21st century we can't believe how brutal and inept
medical treatment was in even the veryrecent past.

Many treatments were prescribed by one person,
and forced upon others with no right of refusal.
In eugenics women were sterilized by the thousand
because the intelligence tests devised for them
approved of patriarchal hubris
more than permitted women intelligence.

Now, in the worlds richest countries
we have a commercial/medicated state
where the masses buy into the values
of an anti-depressants culture
rather than alter the depressive aspects
of the culture.

Only in their most private realms
can folks wonder why nothing ever changes...

Saturday, 3 December 2016

Democracy-the misrepresentation
of the great mass of the people
by the countries wealthiest citizens,
to publicly prove that nobody cares
about the decline in the quality
of the life for the poorest to nothing.

Friday, 2 December 2016

Bertie Ahern was the Prime Minister/Taoiseach of Irelandfrom 1997-2007 and has been involved politics since 1977.His powers of speech had a unique way of leavening political debate,by making people smile in spite of the serious mattersthat he has had to deal with. Please accept the following as a sample....